Why three passes was not enough
Three passes check that rules were followed. They cannot see that the argument is wrong, and twice in a row they did not.
7 min read
Curious
0 XPThe source system ran three proofreading passes for months. Content and slop, mechanics, fresh read. It felt thorough.
Then two batches shipped with defects that all three passes were structurally incapable of seeing.
What three passes cannot see
The distinction that matters
Passes 1 to 3 verify that rules were followed. They cannot verify that the article is right. Every sentence can be individually true, individually rule-compliant, and the article can still be wrong.
Two things are invisible from inside a single article:
- 1.What the other articles say. You cannot see repetition across a batch while reading one piece.
- 2.Whether a claim is allowed. A sentence can be true, well written, and still recommend something your own notes say you do not do.
What passes 4 and 5 actually caught
28
Identical 8-word runs across three articles in one batch
111
The same defect in the next batch, different client
1
Article that shipped with no CTA and no sibling links at all
1
Product recommended for a use case its own notes exclude
Read that last one again. An article recommended the product for something the knowledge base explicitly says it does not do. It passed the slop check, the mechanics check, and a full fresh read, because every sentence in it was fine.
The article with no links at all
A batch of four went through all three passes and came out clean. The cross-article check then found one of them had shipped with no call to action and no links to its sibling articles. Not a wrong link. No links. Three separate reads had missed it, because a missing thing does not draw the eye the way a wrong thing does.
Cost: An article that would have been an orphan on the site, reachable only from the sitemap.
The rule that came out of it. Absence needs its own check. Reading looks for what is wrong on the page. A checklist looks for what is not on the page, which is a completely different task.
When to skip one
| Pass | Runs when | Note |
|---|---|---|
| 1 to 3 | Always | These are the read-throughs |
| 4, cluster | Batches of 2 or more | Skip for a true one-off, and say you skipped it |
| 5, fact and rule | Always, every article | This is the one that catches the expensive errors |
Finished reading?
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